Sad Story of Decades of Exploitation of the Disabled . . . in Iowa!

Sad Story of Decades of Exploitation of the Disabled . . . in Iowa!

Bowdoin College and Free Speech!

Bowdoin College and Free Speech!

For those of us who loved the movie Gettysburg and will forever associate Bowdoin College with the brilliant, if somewhat academic, military tactician Joshua Chamberlain, this news is chilling.

The fourth most highly ranked liberal arts school in the U.S. believes that freedom of association no longer works in the U.S., at least for Christians.

The leadership of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship chapter on campus are being told they must sign a statement that people of alternate sexualities are eligible for leadership in their group. The belief is that, since Maine state law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, there should be no other additional standards to those in Maine law for eligibility to lead in this Christian group.

What? As the article says, are they going to apply that to leadership of dance groups (you can’t discriminate against non-dancers) or foreign student groups (you can’t discriminate against people who have never traveled outside the U.S.)?

Scary ground toward which we head.

Who Owns the Pastor’s Sermons when They Become a Bestseller?

Who Owns the Pastors Sermons when They Become a Bestseller?

It is best to know in advance whether the church, a pastor, or a private enterprise/foundation owns a pastor’s sermons so when they are published, the tax implications of royalties are correctly in place.

Poverty . . . Any Ideas?

Poverty . . . Any Ideas?

This piece, on worldwide poverty, brings to mind our microcosm in the U.S., as addressed by the President in the State of the Union address Tuesday night (January 28, 2014).

I had some thoughts on the wage inequality that the President raised. I don’t believe it will be touched by raising either the federal employees’ minimum wage to $10.40 an hour, nor the country’s minimum wage to $10.40 an hour.

First of all, most federal employees already make far more than $10.40 an hour, so that statement was just window dressing anyway.

Secondly, what can be done on $440 a week? Not much here. Even two married people, both making minimum wage, would be barely able to scrape by on $880 a week in coastal Virginia.

Should we federally control prices? In a free market? Never. That would be the worst of Soviet communism, come to fruition on our own soil.

So how do we equip people to live in this expensive economy?

Certainly not by preparing them to be minimum wage workers all life long.

Our newspaper, not a bastion of liberal nor of conservative thought, laid it all out again last week (these statistics are well known and have often been reported by bipartisan sources): point #1) there is a huge difference in wages between high school graduates (or dropouts) and college graduates, point #2) college graduates tend to marry each other and point #3) college graduates are the ones who still believe in the institution of marriage and embark on it, trying to make it last (high school graduates and dropouts tend to be the ones who believe that the entire institution of marriage is flawed so we should all just cohabitate whenever we wish).

I have had people who don’t believe in the institution of marriage try to give me anecdotal evidence that suggests the above points are not true. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. But the points are true.

So, given that, I was less than encouraged that neither the State of the Union nor its rebuttal led to a discussion of strengthening the family.

It seems that finishing college and embarking on long-lasting marriages is the way forward economically for Americans.

Yes, we used to be able to make it in single-earner households. Some, by drawing down their requirements, still do. But most of us do not. World War II changed that by putting women to work. The economy grew to the point that it costs the wages of a husband plus the wages of a wife to live.

Society shifted. Life is like that.

Any constructive ideas from others about the way forward?

Three Questions to Ask Before Weighing in on a Controversy . . .

Three Questions to Ask Before Weighing in on a Controversy . . .

Rape Insurance??? What our Language Says . . .

Those in Michigan (and nationwide) who object to Michigan’s official policy, written into law last week, that abortions are not a covered service required to be provided by insurance companies, have taken on a new tactic to express their anger.

Coverage for abortions now requires a separate rider in Michigan, sometimes from a different insurance company or sometimes paid for by the individual if her employer has a moral conflict with covering her abortions.  

Opponents are calling these riders “rape insurance.”

Ah, yes, use hyperbole to bring up the extremely small percentage of abortions that are requested due to rape.  Then drag that language front and center!

They say the people who control the language also control the dialogue.  This is not a time for conservatives to passively sit back and let the language be hijacked this way.   

When I was younger, insurance companies often had separate riders for maternity insurance. We didn’t purchase one, even when trying for a brother or sister for Joey (he was born at the local naval hospital and cost us a sum total of $16).  We had intended to have our second child, and any subsequent children, born at home and to pay the midwife out of pocket.

Quaint concept that–paying out of pocket for the things we want.  We now think everything our heart desires must be covered by someone else’s funding, don’t we?   

Thus we have an outcry when those who desire an abortion can’t find a way to get them free (read:  at taxpayer expense or at the expense of the other people employed by their companies).  

I categorically object to the term “rape insurance.”  

It is a false categorization of riders which are making people pay for their own abortions.

Morally, I don’t intend to pay for them.  You have the right to have an abortion.  You also have the right to find a way to pay for it that does not involve me. 

Just sayin’

It is Not Good to Legislate from a Place of Woundedness!

I read a blog post once in which a young man was interviewed. He was a child molester who went after pre-pubescent boys. And he told of how he had been molested as a pre-pubescent boy. He didn’t think what he was doing to the other boys was particularly harmful but . . . even if it was, he didn’t care. His empathy mechanism had died in childhood, when someone first molested him.

There is a gasp of indignation when something like this happens. We mourn the loss of innocence of the young child whose empathy was stripped away. Yet we realize we can’t just turn him loose on an unsuspecting world to lash out against others for the rest of his days.

In many ways, we all can lose our empathy mechanism, in whole or in part.

There are many who have spoken of feeling like their childhood was “on the outside looking in” at the families they presumed were happy when theirs was not. That is sad. Perhaps we have all felt a bit of that at times, but some children grow up feeling it constantly.

Problem is, their empathy mechanism can shut off from that, too. Particularly if their feeling of being an outsider transforms into a desire to take revenge on those they felt had things better than they did. They may, in time, feel as though they are divinely appointed avengers to make sure that those who got so much in childhood don’t carry right on being privileged their whole life through.

If they get into a position of power, they may very well try to make rules that are not good rules . . . because those rules come from that wounded place inside, that child who was thwarted so much that his empathy mechanism shut down.

I have been feeling that that is happening this week, as I have watched the executive branch of our government lash out again and again, against many things that are normal and wholesome in our land.

World War II veterans traveling across the nation to visit their memorial on the National Mall.

Senior citizens from the U.S. and many other countries traveling to the Grand Canyon on a bus.

People trying to vacation at an inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway after making reservations months ago.

People trying to have a meal at a historic restaurant in nearby Yorktown, Virginia but finding that the restaurant is leased in a building belonging to the National Park Service.

And now, dead servicemembers coming back from Afghanistan with no funds being given to their families to fly out to Dover Air Force Base to meet the remains of their loved one. If the loved one is still alive and in a hospital in Germany, no funds to fly the family over there to spend time with the injured servicemember, even if he might be critically injured and end up dying . . .

What, in the name of all that is holy and good, are we doing? This stuff could be fixed with a memo from the President, who heads up the executive branch. I am not going to say that he is the one so lacking in empathy as to make all of these cruel choices, but I will say that he could put a stop to them with a stroke of his pen.

Is he possibly grandstanding, using these people as human shields to try to force the side opposing him to grant him, quickly, the concessions he desires? Only God knows his heart, but I will say that he has not come across as warm and empathetic to any of the above groups this week. And his executive branch, particularly the National Park Service, which works for the Department of the Interior, has run amuck.

If you don’t have a dad who served in World War II, can you still empathize with the veterans of that war? Of course.

If you don’t have elderly parents heading for the Grand Canyon, can you still empathize with the seniors whose bus was turned away from that national park this week? Of course. You can empathize even if you were raised in a family so poor that it never took vacations. Or a broken family that had no concept of vacations . . .

Can you empathize with strangers trying to stay in a Blue Ridge Parkway inn or trying to eat in a Yorktown restaurant? Of course. And you can sympathize with the businesses operating the inn and the restaurant, private businesses that now have employees who need to pay bills and are not working . . .

Most of all, you can empathize with the parents and spouses of the slain military members, even if you have never personally had a familymember in the military. Your heart can ache, knowing how much it would hurt to have to go claim the remains of your own child or spouse . . .

In all of these situations, we can have empathy and should have empathy. If our empathy mechanism is broken, that is not normal. We should not expect everyone to join us in a “who cares” vengeful attitude toward these very normal families trying to take a trip, especially a trip that ends with claiming the remains of a loved one.

I don’t know where the orders to disrupt normal American families as vengefully as possible have been originating during this shutdown, but I know who can stop them with the stroke of a pen.

As I have heard more than one person say this week: “Mr. President, tear down those barriers!”

On the Eve of U.S. Independence Day (Almost . . .)

I unashamedly believe that we Americans live in the best experiment in democracy the world has ever known.  

That is not to take away from Old Testament Israel, which I believe was the best experiment in theocracy (government by God) the world has ever known.  

Two separate categories.  Google them.

At the same time that I stand firmly for American exceptionalism, I can say that I exercise caution in advocating patriotic services at churches.  The reasoning against it that I have seen makes sense.  We are so diverse now that not everyone attending our churches is a U.S. citizen.  My own husband is not.  

That is not to say that non-U.S. citizens are automatically uncomfortable at such services.  I used to joyfully sing “God Save the Queen” at patriotic services in Britain, knowing that it took not one whit away from my joy in being an American.  I would have sung “Deutschland” while living in Germany but my German was so shaky that I never learned the words.

It is possible to participate, without envy and without rancor, in someone else’s patriotic services.    

What does get blurred sometimes in patriotic services is the glory of America (its democracy) and the glory of Old Testament Israel (its theocracy).  It used to be common to say, and even preach, that America has replaced Old Testament Israel in Biblical prophecy.  

I so don’t believe that is true.  I believe a literal Israel will be fullly back in God’s court when future prophetic events are fulfilled.  America is exceptional but it has not replaced Israel.  Again, two separate categories.

The problem is that many Christians are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  Since they understand that America has not replaced Israel in prophecy, they reject American exceptionalism, too.  That is a mistake.  Exceptionalism is a separate belief and not even a particularly theological one.  There have been atheists who believed in American exceptionalism.  There have been people of no religion at all who have believed in it, too.  

The postmillennialists have not been careful in teaching their doctrine in the midst of a population that does not particularly like to read up on history.  In postmillennial belief, there have very much been pockets that have held that Israel has been totally replaced in prophecy by either the U.S. or (more commonly) by the New Testament church.   Some people still believe one of those statements.  

Problem is, when you teach one of those, it has to be taught in context, understanding that people who don’t read their Bibles often and don’t read history books often will misunderstand.  When we teach things and don’t allow for human nature/context in our teaching, we don’t teach them well.

I believe the current rebuke of patriotic services is a kneejerk reaction to theological misunderstanding.  Christians are starting to think that they can’t simultaneously believe that Israel is still fully functional and that America is exceptional.  

I believe both statements to be true.  One, a prophetic interpretation, is theological.  The other is a historical and patriotic statement.

My country is exceptional.  That probably has something to do with many of the Founding Fathers having a deep belief in God.  But it is not a theological statement . . .  You don’t have to be a Christian to believe that the U.S. is exceptional.

Long may she wave!

Controversial Tuesday: Which Bathroom Should a Transgender Student Use?

Which Bathroom Should a Transgender Student Use?

The issue with transgender children coming into the bathroom or locker room of the gender with which they identify (before they have had surgery) is that the people in that bathroom have rights, too.

In a society in which one out of five girls is molested or raped, often in childhood, there can be a distinct trauma associated with looking at the person next to you in a locker room and realizing that that person is naked and sporting the same basic equipment with which you were raped. It is hard enough for some of these girls to grow up and trust their husbands to use their male equipment in a loving, not violent way. I think it is asking too much to expect them to be mature enough to not react, as a child, to a stranger flashing that equipment around in front of them.

It would be much better for us to just go to unisex bathrooms and locker rooms, if that is the case. At least then, everyone will know what to expect and will not be surprised. And more layers of privacy will be built in.

When we lived in Germany, most hallenbads (swimming pools) had unisex locker rooms, but there were numerous changing rooms in there with doors that closed. The occasional old man who felt it necessary to stand in front of his locker naked didn’t elicit any raised eyebrows, so I got used to that just like the Germans did. Very few people walked around the locker room nude, and they seemed kind of lost and pathetic when they did . . .

I am all for a balance of rights. I know the minorities in our country have rights and that makes our country great and unique. But everyone else has them, too! And we are not talking about a right to avoid being annoyed here, we are talking about a right to avoid trauma. I will never change my mind on this, as I have far too many girlfriends who have been sexually abused and don’t need to live in a world where they are victimized over and over again.

Why I Speak out Against Conspiracy Theories (and both the right and the left have ’em)

Why I Speak out Against Conspiracy Theories (and both the right and the left have ’em)

G.K. Chesterton said that there is no more logical world than the world of the person who is insane.

It is logical, nothing contradicts anything else, but it is very, very small and drawn in on itself.

It is as though a normal human can look out at the horizon and see a world full of promise (and some inherent contradictions) while an insane person looks outward and sees a horizon four feet away from him, defining a circle four feet around him which is his world. It is all logical; it all makes sense. But it is small, tedious, and boring. Oh so small.

I believe that maybe the root of insanity is substituting oneself and one’s own beliefs, perceptions, and values for God. And, if I were insane and made myself god of my own world, it would be a small, trivial, mundane world indeed!

Center on myself: get a small, insane world that all relates in consistent logical sense.

Center on God: get a wide, thrilling world with lots of contradictions and unexpected twists.

Life is like that.

And so it is with conspiracy theories, which usually border on the paranoid and the insane, if they are not over the actual line.

In fact, I have seen it said that every time a tragedy happens, people should look for the hidden story behind the story. That the tragedy is just the part designed to engage our interest while the magician does his trick behind the curtain in the other direction from where we are looking.

Oh, small, sad, insane world.

To make a statement like that is to state categorically that you know there is no such thing as an actual natural disaster. And there is no such thing as a senseless act conducted by a petty criminal or small group of criminals.

No, for the conspiracy theorist, everything involves a nearly global network of people, all in on the deception.

Kind of like this global network has become god, in the absence of an actual being called God.

Since I believe in God, I believe there is a metanarrative, not only tying together everyone on earth right now, but also tying together everyone who will ever live on this earth.

But humans cannot avail ourselves of this metanarrative, since it is in God’s mind. And those who know Him well, do not try to play God and tease the metanarrative out of Him. It belongs to Him.

Things are random and full of contradictions and twists in this world because we can’t see the great intelligence underlying all people and all events. We are not meant, right now, to see how God ties them all together.

Not until later, at the Great Unveiling, when we will see that there was, indeed, logic to everything.

But God’s logic, not man’s puny logic.

Controversial Tuesday: Can You Be a Gay Christian?

Yesterday someone called me to task for using the phrase “gay Christian.”  Rightly so, I believe. I used the phrase as shorthand, because a blogger, a sexually abstaining believer attracted to the same sex, used it about herself.  But if you can hang in with me for a lengthy explanation, there is more to the story than just throwing that phrase out there . . .

I posted a link to a blog post by this courageous young believer.  Her post stated that when Christians go along with the world’s trend of saying that gay sex is not sin, we take hope away from believers who struggle with same sex attraction and know that the Bible says it is sin.  We, who have been delivered from various sins like fornication with the opposite sex, alcoholism, drug abuse, lying, stealing, and gossip sometimes treat homosexuality as though it were the only sin for which God could not provide deliverance.  

I understand that homosexual sex is a sin in which one’s identity can become entangled.  Instead of thinking of oneself as a person who has homosexual sex (an action), the person can think of herself as a lesbian (a state of being).

Yet we would never think of calling a new believer a gossiping Christian or a lying Christian or an alcoholic Christian.  So the point is well taken that we should probably not call someone a gay Christian.  It is more accurate to say she is a believer who struggles with same sex attraction, and to only say that when there is a need to address the issue in context.  Otherwise, she is simply a believer, another believer.

As we all are just forgiven sinners of various stripes and types! 

God has created sex and has provided a pattern in His Word for how to have sex in purity.  When we do that, it models the love Christ has for His church.  

We heterosexuals, and those who identify as homosexuals, have broken God’s pattern for purity in our sexuality in many ways.  But just because we break His pattern, we don’t cause it to cease to exist.  

Any temptations short of that pattern (faithful married love between a man and a woman) need to result in abstinence.  There are plenty of situations where heterosexuals need to abstain from sex, too, some of them possibly lasting a lifetime.

The reasons for someone developing an identity of homosexual or lesbian are undoubtedly complex.  It is probably true that many people who have had gay sex are not going to become people who engage comfortably in heterosexual sex.  Not in this lifetime.  But this lifetime is very short compared to eternity.  And if sexually abstaining for this lifetime keeps one faithful to the Lord who loves her, it is a very small price to pay in light of all He has done.  

Many heterosexuals might do well to pay heed to this idea!  Not everyone is meant to be married and we often marry for totally selfish and wrong motives . . .

Just a thought . . . 

I Corinthians 6:9-11, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

Controversial Tuesday: Women in Combat, Part II

Women in Combat, Part II

Yesterday I watched a workmate with 22 years in as a USMC officer put in his retirement papers as a protest against the fact that the ban was lifted on women in combat.

Part I, above, is my experiences in the training command, back in 1981, as I went through the transformation from a naive Midwestern girl who knew very few people in the military to an officer, in fourteen painful weeks!

This part expands on my statement in Part I that the prohibition of women in combat was not going to remain forever.

I didn’t expect it to be lifted so soon, but I did expect it to be lifted.

Now, can I recommend to my young civilian friends who are females (or males uncertain in what they believe about combat) that they enter the military for a career?

This post will answer that question.

I now believe there was one period in U.S. history, from the time the service academies opened to women in 1976 until just now in 2013, that a woman could enter the military with an understanding they she probably would not go into combat, but yet expecting that she would be taken seriously on a parallel career path to her male colleagues that involved everything else the military had to offer.

That was a pretty good deal but one that could not last forever.

I graduated high school in 1976 and could have been in that first class of women attending the U.S. Naval Academy for college.

Only I wasn’t thinking about that then.  I went on to a state university in Michigan and only thought about the military five years later, when I graduated from college during a recession that hit the auto industry in Michigan very hard.

I checked with Army, Navy, and U.S.A.F. recruiters, then settled on the Navy, as they guaranteed me officer candidate school and follow-on training in a compatible field for me (if I survived officer training!).

At the time, women did not deploy on combatant ships, only support ships.  And people in my career field did not deploy on support ships.  So, by a weird catch-22, I was not eligible to be on board ships at all, initially.  I later served for two weeks on a cruiser as a reservist.

What I did do was deploy overseas with a patrol squadron (land-based) for the first three years of my career.  I went to Spain (Rota), Iceland (Keflavik), the Azores (Lajes), and Bermuda.

And everywhere I went, I worked inside an aircraft hangar, in an office, with a skirt on.

In fact, it turns out that the only time I worked in slacks in a 27-year career was during my initial officer training and for those two weeks onboard ship.

Did I plan it that way?  No.  Do I believe women should only wear skirts?  No (that is just who I am–I don’t project that on anyone else).

Remember, I was the naive Midwestern girl.  My career worked out in spite of me sometimes.

But it truly was an amazing time to be on active duty as a woman.  I was born ten years after Israel became a nation again.  That means in the Post World War II Baby Boom.  And World War II had first brought women into the services as auxiliaries.  WAVES, the Navy called them.  They were not intended to be full officers, nor to be permanent officers, but they filled some Navy jobs so that men could concentrate on combat.

Not because men were thought to be cannon fodder.  But because men were thought to be stronger physically and more able to handle combat.  If women did some of the office jobs, they freed the men up in wartime to handle the enemy directly.

That concept of freeing men up by doing office jobs away from combat areas continued post-World War II.  It is the concept that was understood when I entered the military in 1981.

Today, that concept seems antiquated.  But it must be taken as the intermediate step it was.  No woman entered the military in my generation thinking of men only as combat-worthy grunts, nor intending to deprive them of anything by taking office jobs.

But our realm slowly expanded and eventually involved jobs where women were taken POW as early as 1991, in the first Gulf War.

Once that became a reality, the ban on combat for women could not last forever.

In insurgent wars and irregular warfare, women were already venturing across the “front lines” without even knowing it.

Thus I know women in all four services who have already been in combat areas.  Navy, too, as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have both used Navy folks to augment our ground forces from the Army and the USMC.

And, that being the case, the combat ban needed to be lifted.

Now, would I recommend the military for a young woman nowadays?  Or a man unsure what he believes about combat?

No, don’t come in unless you are prepared to possibly go into combat.

Right now we are saying women can volunteer for those positions.  But that is due to the fact that there are currently more than enough volunteers for the infantry in both the Army and the USMC.  That will probably always be the case.  But that can’t be guaranteed either.

It is a custom and a convention, not a law in either service.  And customs and conventions can change, as you have just seen in my description of my career.

Within one generation, we will be like Israel, expecting women to go into combat without batting an eyelash.  And there are certain women who are just as tough as any man around (or tougher in some cases!!!) who will jump on this and perform admirably.

But for those like me who want to serve their country as an analyst, in a skirt, working for the Department of Defense as a civilian should now be your goal.

Controversial Tuesday: Taking the Idea of Virtual Church as Far as It Goes

Controversial Tuesday: Taking the Idea of Virtual Church as Far as It Goes

So if you can have a satellite church listening to your service at the same time as the mother church meets, why not have it time-delayed by a few hours? Or on a different day? Or just listening to recorded sermons of someone in the past? Even if that person has since died.

What about when we will be able to build holograms of people that will live on indefinitely after them? Could a hologram of a dead pastor lead a church?

How much do real people need real relationships to constitute a local body of believers?

Being Fat in the Church, Part II . . .

Being Fat in the Church, Part II . . .

Some more comments on the above link (I began this post yesterday):

First of all, there is a bit of disingenuousness in several of the emphases of this Fox News editorial.  And, again, I will point out that it is an editorial in a secular publication, meant to gather readers and advertisers to their side, so there will needs be things that just don’t fit neatly with the Scriptures in it.

One of those is the way obesity is almost presented as though it were the only epidemic the church has ever faced.  There have been many much more serious epidemics in history that killed almost entire church congregations at one time.  Google the hymn history of “Now Thank We All Our God,” written by the last pastor standing in a walled German town during the Thirty Years’ War.  Almost the entire town, including all of his fellow clergy, had been wiped out by the plague.

That being said, medical care cost far less during earlier centuries because medicine had not advanced enough to save lives.  Back then, when you got the plague, you died.  If there even was a hospital, it was just a holding tank for sick people–there not only were no specialist treatments for most diseases, there were no treatments whatsoever.

So we are blessed (and, some may say, cursed) with living in times when we have a vast array of highly expensive options open to us medically.  They cost money.  That is just the way it is.

Further, pastors are presented in the article as men who are busy studying and discipling their people in the Scriptures and who are terribly inconvenienced by having their study interrupted to call on sick and hospitalized parishioners.  Really?  All of the pastors I have known have scheduled in daily time for visits to the sick.  They regard it as a pleasure.  It is what they do.

Several statements are made in the article about how much higher the percentage of obese people is in the church than outside of it.  I am thinking that it takes time to attend one to three services a week, plus volunteer at one’s church.  If a person were not a churchmember, he surely would have more time to hit the golf links, as the joke has always gone.

But further, most churches discourage drinking, drugging, and promiscuous sexual lifestyles.  Outside of the church, those are the three vices most often found.  Inside of the church, if someone is going to have an addiction, it will most likely be food.  There is no polite way to say that.

Realizing that we can collectively have an issue with this, our congregation is getting smarter about bringing Weight Watcher-friendly food to those famous Baptist church socials .  We let each other know which foods are light in points and how many points each of those dishes is worth.

I agree with the writer of the article that the cure for obesity within the church is the church, but I would much more emphasize the grace that we forgiven sinners can offer each other in every situation life presents.  I know that, although I just finished losing 100 pounds in the year of 2012, I was never treated as a second-rate citizen by my fellow churchmembers, even when I was 100 pounds overweight.  I have taught Sunday school, worked in the nursery, sung in the choir and sung soloes, and played in the orchestra all along.

The very support of my fellow churchmembers is what freed me in the end to grab hold of God and lose the weight.  If I had been in one of the congregations where people kvetch about the cost of the staff health care (as the article says), I doubt I would be saying that I lost weight with the support of my church.  In those churches, anyone who loses weight may possibly do it in spite of her fellow churchmembers!

I can’t emphasize enough that churchmembers extend grace and mercy to each other in difficulty because it is what we do.  We love the one who is obese just as we love the unwed mother and the recovering alcoholic.  Some of these folks may never break free of their life-dominating sins but we don’t stop loving them, even then.  If an unwed mother has her third out-of-wedlock child or if an obese staffmember has her third piece of cheesecake, we are there to be the Body of Christ for that person.

Then there may come a time when we are talking and the subject comes up.  The obese person may ask for our help in losing weight.  At that point, we offer it, not as someone who feels superior, but as a fellow forgiven sinner with faults of our own.

Shortcutting the process by having catty discussions about how a disproportionate number of our health care dollars go to provide care for just one or two people is a sure way to shame those people and to serve them notice that you wish them to leave their staff positions.  Therefore, unless you are the pastor and you really are trying to get them to leave, it is better to wait for the obese person to bring the subject of weight loss up.

After all, isn’t the point to become more Christlike in the end?  All of us have conditions of the heart that need to be treated surgically by the Great Physician.  Obesity is just one of the more noticeable ones!

Controversial Tuesday: What Do We Tell Young Children About Gay Marriage?

In light of the legalization of gay marriage in Britain, which I believe will soon come to the U.S., I have some thoughts:

Many of you know that I am a big history buff.  I mean, even though I have some favorites, I love all time periods.  I think they light up the pleasure center of my brain.

In the Bible, Revelation 19 talks about the marriage supper of the Lamb.  Revelation 19 shows us, along with other passages, the idea that God has ordained human marriage to reflect a picture of the marriage of Jesus, the Lamb, to His bride, the church.

Jesus pictures the male, the initiator.  The church (that is all saved people, all of us together) pictures the female, the responder.  This is God’s order for His created universe.  Where He created male and female, He created those distinctions.

Now for young parents right now, I am thinking they will be raising their children in a world where gay marriage will be accepted as normal by most people.  Christians will have the job of instilling in their children, independently of the world, the idea that God’s design for the human race, fully male and fully female in relation to each other, was meant to be a paler reflection of His design in heaven.

That is no small undertaking.  But I look at history and see that God’s original picture of marriage, one man and one woman for life, has prevailed for thousands of years.  Though human fickleness and frailty have conspired against it, it has prevailed.

It did not get clouded by Old Testament polygamy, despite Abraham and Jacob and David and even Solomon.  Polygamy turned out to be too expensive for most men, back in the day when men expected to financially take care of their babies.  Most men could not afford it, so most men did not do it.

Today we have two fronts battling to be the first to erase the picture of divine love from the human race:  the more than 50% of our young ladies who only use a man as a “baby daddy” instead of settling into a lifelong relationship that reflects God’s gracious love and the 2% of our young people (latest studies) that identify as gay or transgender (I don’t include bisexuals here because many of them embark on traditional marriages).

God will preserve His image in the fallen human race.  He will eventually restore it.  I have no idea how He is going to bring this one around–young kids being born right now are going to grow up seeing “families” at the mall, and at school programs, who have two mommies or two daddies.  They will also see many young mothers who are raising children alone.  Probably a majority of the young women wherever they go.

Yet there is nowhere in Revelation where I see it said that God sits down all the Christians born after 2009 and explains to them what His original design for marriage was!  It seems they already know before they get to heaven!  Maybe God has written that on our hearts and consciences so deeply that we can’t eradicate His image, try as we might.

I mean, and I say this tongue in cheek, the great silence in heaven for the space of half an hour is not mentioned in conjunction with God taking all the Millennials to another room to explain to them His original complementarian design for male and female, ya know?!

We have to conclude that God has it covered.  Even when gay marriage is legal in all 50 states of the U.S., as I believe it will be, those gay marriages will not be able to stamp out the picture of Christ’s love for humankind shown in the marriage of a man and a woman for life.

Just as the high heterosexual divorce rate and the high rate of out-of-wedlock births has not been able to stamp it out.  No matter what is said to redefine a family, we all know, deep down inside, that the ideal is one man and one woman for life.  That will never change, because it is a God-authored concept.

I believe my response to a gay person contemplating same sex marriage is the same as my response to a young lady contemplating getting pregnant so she can have a “trophy baby.”

“God has created and organized the universe to make it impossible for you to find the fulfillment you seek by way of the action you are contemplating.”

I would say it quietly and gently and mercifully, but I would say it.

Then, that said, they get to choose what they do next.

And I will pray that they follow God’s design for their lives, for therein lies love, joy, and contentment.